Burnett - World War II : Scottish tales of adventure

World War II

Scottish Tales of Adventure

Allan Burnett is one of Scotlands best-selling authors for young readers. He was born and brought up in the Western Isles and educated at the University of Edinburgh, while working after dark as a ghost-tour guide. Among Allans other books are William Wallace and All That and Invented in Scotland: Scottish Ingenuity and Invention throughout the Ages.

This is a book about war. That doesnt mean it is all guns blazing, and nothing else. There is a lot more to a good war story than bombs and machine guns although you will find plenty of both in this book.

A good war story might have no weapons in it at all. Instead of being packed with explosions, it is bursting with emotion. The characters thoughts and feelings are what drive the story forward, and capture our hearts.

Many people had their hearts in their mouths when war was declared. There were no bombs, no machine guns and no explosions. Just a crackling voice on a wireless radio set that made everybody freeze.

This country is at war with Germany, said the voice. It was the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain.

People never forgot where they were or what they were doing when they heard those words just after 11 oclock in the morning on 3 September 1939. Some were in their living rooms. Others were out walking the dog, and rushed back to hear the news. Many were at church. It was a Sunday, after all.

That was back in the days when Sunday was still holy a day for peace and quiet. Except Sunday, 3 September 1939, created the opposite of peace and quiet. It created World War II or the Second World War, to give it its Sunday name.

World War II sometimes sounds like a Bible story a battle between good and evil. Or, as American soldiers said at the time, it was the good guys versus the bad guys.

The good guys were the British and their supporters known as the Allies. The bad guys were Nazi Germany and their supporters known as the Axis Powers.

Whose side would you have been on? The answer might seem obvious. Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler tried to conquer the world, and kill everyone they didnt like. Millions of people died as a result. There is no doubt they were the bad guys.

Except, for people who lived through the war, it was sometimes not so easy to tell the good side from the bad. In this book you will discover people who were on the German side, but turned out not to be such bad people after all.

The stories here also reveal that the so-called good guys could sometimes treat people in a way that was really cruel and barbaric. So things were often not very clear-cut.

It can be hard to tell our enemy from our friend sometimes, and some of the stories here invite us to see ourselves through our enemys eyes, to feel things our enemy is feeling.

Maybe if we can see things from an enemys point of view, it will help us work things out peacefully. On the other hand, these tales show that we human beings are a warlike bunch, and we are fascinated by struggles, battles and conflicts.

There have been plenty of battles in Scotlands long history. This book looks at World War II from a Scottish point of view, because this small country played a big part in the war even though most of the battles were in foreign lands.

The stories here are about men and women, allies and enemies. Some were born in Scotland, some were not but they all had a Scottish war.

So what exactly does it mean to have had a Scottish war? Read on and find out.

L ance-Sergeant Stewart Watson opened his eyes. He wondered how long he had been unconscious. He also wondered why everything was upside down.

Bruised and bleeding, Watsons body was slung over another mans shoulders. His head and arms swayed gently from side to side as his bearer plodded along.

Watson looked down at the legs of the soldier carrying him. Thats an enemy uniform, Watson thought to himself with alarm. Whats going to happen to me?

There were other thoughts, too. Where am I? How did I get here? How badly wounded am I?

It was the summer of 1944. Watson had been fighting in a battle at a French town called Caen. Watson was in the Glasgow Highlanders. They were a Scottish regiment of the British Army. They were fighting on the Allied side against the enemy the German army.

Caen was a beautiful medieval town of old churches and market squares. It was in a place called Normandy, in northwest France. Caen was an important town during the war. Whoever controlled Caen could control the roads and rivers around it.

As Sergeant Watson was carried along by the German soldier, he felt a sharp pain in his arm. It was a bad wound. He remembered crossing his own front line and going into no-mans-land the danger zone. Then he had been hit by an explosion and passed out. Now he realised he was still on the battlefield, which was somewhere on the outskirts of Caen.

Up until now, the town had been in the hands of the Germans. The Allies were determined to drive the Germans out and seize it. The Allies had landed on nearby beaches on DDay and then come here. The success of the war depended on what happened next.

It was all a long way from Watsons home in Maryhill, Glasgow. He wondered if he would ever get back there. Would he ever see his family again? Or his girlfriend? Would he ever see the River Clyde? Before the war he had worked on the river as an apprentice in a shipyard.

There was hope. Watson realised the German soldier was actually carrying him towards the Allied front line. He could tell the German was wounded, too. Now the enemy soldier wanted to give himself up and save Watsons life.

Eventually they reached safety. The two men were picked up by other soldiers from the Allied side. Watson was pleased to see that the brave German seemed to be getting the same care and attention as he was. Both men were put on stretchers and carried back to base.

Watson was now safely behind Allied lines, but his life was still in danger. Without treatment for his wounds he could die. At the base camp, trenches had been dug in the soil where wounded soldiers were laid while they waited to be taken to hospital. Watson and his new German companion were lowered into a trench.